I like to think of the 9th house as a happy place. Here’s
where we don lederhosen, toss a knapsack on our back, and stride
gaily through the wide world, singing as we go, “Valderee,
Valderah, Valderee, Valderah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.” Here we feel
adventurous and free. The 9th holds our personal Alps, where the
spirit soars, the mind expands, and life acquires new meaning. The
9th takes us to uncharted territories and gifts us with new perspectives.
It rules travel to faraway places, higher education, religion, philosophy,
mysticism, divination, and publishing—endeavors that increase
our understanding and broaden the scope of our lives. When there
is a 9th house emphasis by transit, progression or solar return,
we might get justifiably excited: A new adventure is on the way!
Rarely do we worry about planets in this happy house.

The year my Aunt Nancy had five planets in the 9th house of her
solar return, she read voraciously—about past lives, auras
and astral travel. She listened to talk radio shows about mediums,
the spirit world and UFOs. She pondered the meaning of life, the
lessons of her three marriages. She soared on the airways of her
mind. Clearly she was experiencing her 9th house. That’s because
she had no choice. Shortly after her birthday, she was hit by a car.
She spent most of that year lying flat on her back in bed.

My friend with the 9th house Sun says his happiest memories are
the two times he hit the road, without plan, letting serendipity
chart his course. The first time Dave traveled with a hitchhiker’s
thumb and knapsack. Fourteen years later he took to the road in a
customized van complete with Nintendo and a mini-refrigerator. What
launched his two adventures? Was it 9th house wanderlust? No. He’d
been stunned by the two great setbacks of his life. The first came
when Saturn conjoined his Sun. Dave’s wife left him—for
a woman. Fourteen years later Saturn opposed his Sun. He was fired
from the company he had helped to build for the past ten years. Both
times his solar identity cracked. Ninth house wandering was how he
put himself together again.

Expatriates often have significant placements in their natal 9th.
Astrology concurs that such individuals might find their fortunes
far from home. My foreign-born clients with 9th house planets often
do seem free-spirited, broad-minded, and adventurous. Andre emigrated
from France in his early twenties and never went back home. With
a 9th house Moon, he loves travel, philosophy, politics, and women.
He has an incredible joie d’vivre. But the year a crisis threatened
to return him to his homeland, he told me several horrific childhood
stories. Andre left France because he needed to put thousands of
miles between himself and his family.

When the 9th is strong in a chart, natally or by transit, we should
get curious about what’s motivating those planets. Perhaps
it’s a simple urge for adventure, a desire to cruise around
the world, find one’s guru, expand one’s future with
a university degree. Or perhaps the individual has paid a "world-upside-down" tuition
fee, had her passport stamped by crisis. The days after President
Bush’s re-election, I was stunned to hear so many of my “blue
state” friends threatening to leave for Canada, New Zealand,
the south of France. Would they leave everything behind because of
an election? As the weeks progressed, most calmed down. I came to
understand their initial reaction as a knee-jerk 9th house response.
When the hammer falls, we take out the map and look for a new frontier.
There’s nothing like a distant horizon to repair a shattered
soul. Whenever we reach a personal limit, after a divorce, a career
gone bad, when life doesn’t turn out as we hoped it would,
to the 9th house we’ll go. We’ll take a trip. We’ll
return to school. We’ll seek advice from a 9th house person—an
astrologer, lawyer, or priest. We’ll pray for God’s blessings.
As we go through the outer 9th house motions, inwardly we’re
reaching, stretching and struggling to acquire a new perspective
on our world.

The 9th encourages our quest for meaning in life. But generally
we don’t go there until life falls apart. Few of us retire
gaily to our dens to pen our personal philosophies. Something upends
us and starts our questioning. There is an astrological connection
between the 9th house and crisis. The 9th follows the 8th house of
death and dissolution. In the 8th the ground is razed, monsters crawl
up from the basement, our identities are stripped and laid bare.
Something we’ve held onto dies. At such moments, we raise our
eyes and seek a higher power’s grace. We want to connect with
something greater than ourselves. Would we look for the gods if our
tummies were full and life were constantly joyful?

The 9th rules the literature of spirit, the metaphors, symbols
and myths that bind a culture, its moral codes, its shared ideals
and visions. No other house speaks so eloquently of the dignity and
intelligence of the human spirit. The 9th is a decidedly human house.
What other species builds temples and universities or courts of law?
Perhaps what most distinguishes humankind from the animals is our
capacity for abstract thought. We look for underlying patterns, the
overarching laws of Nature. We try to master our fates, predicting
and planning for the future—based on our experience of the
past or what we can divine from portentous symbols. Animals live
in the present. Through language and imagery, we humans travel in
time, building on the foundations of past lessons, drawing new futures
out of imagination's pocket.

Yet we pay a heavy price for this gift. Knowledge of time also
brings awareness of the inevitability of death. And this knowing
throws us into an anxious, insecure, even terrified condition. Fear
is an unexpected by-product of our awareness of time. As my dog lies
peacefully on the couch, I worry about the future, about paying my
bills, about dying someday, about watching a loved one die. My dog
is blissfully ignorant of the daily news. But as I watch the pictures
from Iraq, or Albuquerque for that matter, I wonder, why such suffering?
What does it all mean? Against the suffering and impermanence of
life, we seek a more enduring grace. Our 9th ideas feed our spirit.
Our religious and cultural institutions promise that something good
will survive after our last breath. We’re comforted by the
belief that when we do die, we will pass into something rather than
nothing. By making sense of death, the 9th gives new meaning to our
existence. That’s why I consider this a happy house. This is
where we refill our cups—with dignity, hope, and joy.

We seek truth in the 9th house. But what we get there are beliefs,
an entirely different matter. Its opposite, the 3rd house, is built
on facts. The 9th is knit with theories and opinions. While its ideals
can open up new worlds, they can also shut our borders and lock us
into conflict. The 9th rules higher mind, but this can be any belief
that guides us. It becomes our personal religion, and religions can
cause more wars than peace. Discussing belief systems with clients
is tricky work. Their beliefs will come up in almost every reading.
But you can’t predict them in advance, nor pry troublesome
ones loose with any ease.

Let’s say you have a client with the Sun, Mars, and Uranus
in the 9th house of her solar return. She’s going to be (Sun),
act (Mars), and change (Uranus) in 9th house ways. You start with
outer options. “Are you doing any traveling this year?” “No.” “Are
you going back to school?” “Nuh-uh.” Are you doing
any teaching or publishing?” Your client shakes her head. A
little desperate now,
“Are you involved in a lawsuit? Joining a monastery? Immersed
in philosophy?”
Your client is wondering why her friend recommended you. You’re
wondering why her solar return chart is garbage. Quickly you move
on to what your client really wants to talk about: “My husband
is an ass.” There are no transits to relationship planets or
houses in her natal chart. Why is marriage on her mind? What’s
going on in her SR 9th house? Why is her SR 7th house empty?

Along with houses 7 and 8, the 9th house is in the relationship
quadrant of the horoscope. As Howard Sasportas writes, “The
1st house is ‘I am’ while the opposite house, the 7th
is ‘We are.’ The 2nd is ‘I have’ and its
opposite, the 8th is ‘We have.’ Correspondingly, the
3rd is ‘I think’ and the 9th is
‘We think.’1

When a husband and wife discover they think—or more precisely—believe differently,
they have a 9th house problem. I don’t necessarily mean that
she’s a Catholic and he’s a Buddhist. Let’s say
her husband believes cheating means having physical sex with someone;
everything else is harmless fun. But she believes that cheating is
anything you do in secret with another woman, including hopping onto
pornographic websites or sending salacious emails to online partners.
When she discovers he’s been indulging his sexual fantasies
in cyberspace, she learns that what
“I think” is not what “we think.” Another
way to look at it is the 9th house is the 3rd house from the relationship
7th. The 3rd house describes the mental environment of the 1st house
self… the 9th house describes the mental environment of the
7th house relationship. When there is a disturbance in this environment,
a conflict between one partner’s ideals and another’s,
the solar return will reflect this with planets in the 9th.

Conflicting values are among the most difficult relationship problems
to resolve. It’s hard enough discussing 9th house subjects
with friends. Steve has Uranus and Pluto in the 9th house. We’ve
had countless debates. Like many with difficult planets here, Steve
had a 9th house monkey to get off his back. Raised in a strict Christian
household, he traveled a straight and narrow path, living cleanly
to keep in God’s good graces. In his early twenties, his progressed
Moon entered the 9th house. Not surprisingly, he was studying at
a university. But he was troubled. He was living at home, had no
girlfriend, no sense of the future, and none of the rewards he expected
the Christian life would bring. He became bitter and suspicious,
not just of Christianity, but of any religion. By the time I met
him, he was fond of quoting Marx: "Religion is the opiate of
the masses."

I reminded him of the lines that come before that famous sentence.
Marx actually said, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,
the heart of the heartless world, and the soul of the soulless condition.
It is the opiate of the masses." Prayers are not the only opiate,
I pointed out, also political manifestoes, all philosophy, art and
literature—the many ways we brace ourselves against the incomprehensible
sufferings of life. My friend wrapped himself in existentialist despair. "Okay,
so if we just make it all up, then what's the point? If there is
no God, no 'something else,' it's all a lie, and life is just plain
meaningless." There was both anger and triumph in his voice.
There was no use getting him to see the irony of his own religion,
that his nihilism was how he'd written meaning into his life. Our
debate fizzled because neither of us was willing to change. Several
years later, when the progressed Moon again entered Steve’s
9th house, he sent me an email from faraway India. His 9th house
horizons had expanded. He was traveling with a quantum physics professor
who was introducing him to a new religion. “I now know God
is consciousness,”
Steve wrote, “existing everywhere in everything!”

The 9th is a cadent house. In cadent houses we adapt to changing
circumstances. We are acted upon by the world and we must adjust.
No matter how certain our beliefs at any time, we should remember
they’re not fixed. Do you still believe what you believed when
you were 12? Twenty-four? Forty-two? If your client is stuck with
a limiting belief, she’s calling because she needs a door opened
in her 9th. The sign on her 9th house cusp won’t tell you what
she does or what she should believe. But it can tell you how she
holds her beliefs and how you can help her shift to one more workable.
Water signs will need you to speak to their feelings. Earth signs
will want you to speak in practical, tangible terms. Fire signs want
to be inspired. Air signs will enjoy the play of ideas. Sometimes
the best assistance you can offer is simply naming what feels like “truth” as
a belief. Let’s say your client or friend is in a relationship
with an unfaithful husband. She’s miserable. It’s slowly
killing her, but she can’t bring herself to leave. After some
discussion, the underlying belief comes out. “I’m afraid
that Brian is my last chance. If I leave him, I’ll never find
love again.”

To help someone dismantle a limiting belief, questions work better
than lectures. That’s because the transformation must happen
inside that person rather than come from you. Questions help till
the mental soil so a new thought can take root. But empathy is important. “I
can see how you’d feel that way, and how scary it would be
to live alone for the rest of your life.” Until your friend
or client feels heard, she won’t relax enough to shift her
thinking. Hold her truth respectfully in the space between you. Then
ask another question. “How do you know for sure that you’ll
never meet someone new? What evidence tells you this is true?” Usually
there’s no rational evidence for such beliefs. Of course it’s
every astrologer’s dream to find a lovely Venus/Sun progression
in such a person’s future. You’d like to say you know
for sure that she’ll find true love next June. But you can’t
prove futures with astrology. You can only make an educated guess.
And if a person doesn’t believe that love is possible, her
Venus/Sun progression might arrive as a box of chocolates or a delightful
shopping spree.

“I know that women my age don’t often find romance.
And good men are always hard to find.” One of the advantages
of being an astrologer is you that know plenty of real-life examples
to disprove such dismal logic. “Just last week I talked with
a woman who met her soul mate at sixty-two. She had no idea that’s
what would happen when she divorced at fifty-five. What would change
for you if you believed new love was possible? How would you act?
What would you do?”
“Well I guess I wouldn’t feel so weak. Maybe I’d
lose some weight. I’d start doing some of the things I’ve
always wanted to do, like taking that metal sculpting class, and
seeing if I could get my poetry published.” You hear a new
strength in her voice and reflect that back. Spend some time in the
spaciousness of this new belief. You can’t force people to
change their thinking. But you can pluck a thread loose from their
personal religion, and hope that after the conversation, their perceived
limitations will continue to unravel.

As a writer, my own confidence routinely wavers. When inspiration
disappears, my belief becomes “I’m just no good and should
give it up.” During one such season, I did what I encourage
my clients to do. I called an astrologer, James Braha, a Vedic practitioner.
He said my Vedic chart confirmed that writing was my destiny; no
bad planets were standing in the way. Nonetheless, I was stuck. "Perhaps
it's the lack of confidence in your 12th house Moon," Braha
suggested. The Vedic remedy? A Hindu ceremony known as a nava
graha (or, nine planets) yagya.

I had heard of this ceremony. You pay some money, a priest in India
chants for a while, and your problems disappear—groovy! Here
was foreign travel and religious ritual rolled into one, and I could
do it all with a credit card and phone number! "No," Braha
cautioned, "you should do it in person. These are powerful ceremonies.
But if the priest gets interrupted, it won't take. Check the yellow
pages and find a local temple."

I arrived at a temple in the hills above Malibu on a Monday, the
Moon's day. It was an auspicious waxing Moon. I had the items I'd
been instructed to bring: two coconuts, two pounds of rice, 25 sticks
of wood, a pack of camphor, a pack of incense, a pound of ghee, some
assorted fruit, a bouquet of flowers, and a check for $101 made out
to the temple. I was given a receipt and told to hand it to one of
the two priests sitting by Shiva's shrine.

There was just one priest. When I produced my receipt, he scowled,
then hollered in a foreign tongue, perhaps calling the other priest
who was nowhere to be found. I was told to sit near the fire pit.
Grumpy, the priest unpacked my rice and other items and poured them
in a silver bowl. He instructed me in placing the fruit and flowers.
He started the fire, then, in somewhat broken English, confessed
he had a headache from praying in the morning sun. Braha had said
nothing about a headache ruining the ceremony, but I was beginning
to wonder.

The priest lit the fire and began chanting. Then he looked at me
expectantly. I was supposed to do something? Yes, I was supposed
to repeat the strange Sanskrit words. I took a deep breath. Real
Hindu devotees were coming and going all around us. I felt like an
idiot tourist, then made a split-second decision to abandon myself
to the experience. Over the next hour, I chanted with passion, threw
incense and ghee into the fire at the appointed moments (unfortunately
I had brought oil-treated kindling sticks which flamed up so vigorously
they nearly singed the priest's brows). I circled the fire pit nine
times, bowed up and down nine times. Then the dreaded event occurred:
the other priest arrived and interrupted us!

Did it matter? Lost in the ceremony, I had almost forgotten why
I was there, until the priest, friendlier now, instructed me to ask
the planets for what I wanted. I closed my eyes, tried to formulate
the words carefully. Suddenly I felt such a powerful in-rush of energy,
I was almost knocked off my feet. It was brief, but it was strong.

What happened after the ceremony surprised me. No shafts of light
poured from the heavens, no divine voice thundered in my head. I
did not run to my computer and start typing. But by the end of that
day, a new conviction had quietly stolen in to replace my lack of
confidence. I had a different perspective on my work. I hadn't reached
this in any logical way. I’d leapt somewhere, but how? Perhaps
it’s just this mystery that makes the 9th house so appealing--how
your world can change with just an idea, a prayer, or a strange ritual.
What is this power we petition here? Why has every civilization made
offerings to it? How has this power poured into us as new concepts,
moral guidance, art that endures for centuries? Certainly our 9th
house beliefs can trap us and draw a curtain on our growth. They
also can take us so far beyond ourselves that we conceive ourselves
anew. That’s why mankind is so devoted to the 9th, connecting
with God, searching for answers, believing in miracles. There is
much in this house to ponder. And definitely much to love.

MOONPRINTS by Dana Gerhardt

Popular
with readers of "The Mountain Astrologer" for almost
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